[MOD] The Authentic Colonization (TAC)

[raystuttgart]

I'm losing boycotted goods from my capitol, it has a Customs House but it doesnt seem to sell any goods. What am I doing wrong? Is something bugged?

Custom House in TAC does not sell boycotted goods.

 

[Writing Bull]

I have to defeat his entire navy in addition to his entire expeditionary force?

No, killing his soldiers and cannons should be quite enough. Guynemer, could you upload your save?

it has a Customs House but it doesnt seem to sell any goods. What am I doing wrong? Is something bugged?

At our English manual you will find explanations of important features like that.

For example, this is the explanation of automatic selling:

At each turn, exactly 50 per cent of all excess storage will be abolished in the settlement, except for having a building located there enabling automatic selling of the surplus. The last level of this kind of buildings is the custom house, automatically selling any surplus not being affected by a boycott at 80 per cent of the current sales price (and of course after deducting the current tax rate).

 

[Guynemer]

No, killing his soldiers and cannons should be quite enough. Guynemer, could you upload your save?

Alas, I can not, as it has already been overwritten.

If he had moved some of my civilians out of a city he had taken, could that be enough? While moving my last gasp force into range of the colony he had taken, I saw a couple of my former civilians buggering off north into the fog of war, into native territory. They were not armed.

 

[Writing Bull]

If he had moved some of my civilians out of a city he had taken, could that be enough?

Yes, that should be the cause.

 

[skallben]

At our English manual you will find explanations of important features like that.

Thank for your reply, I don't think the in-game pedia contain this information. I must have skipped through the manual a bit too hasty too

Either way, it makes sense and the mod is far greater than vanilla, I love it.

 

[Isabelxxx]

Ok, 1st game played with TAC and I lost it. I will not repeat the good things of the mod since I have played this later than the rest and obviously all is already written so I will write about other things.

There is a big problem introduced by TAC when trying to win via independence, something not present in vanilla. Since now the man-o-wars stay in the map around the player's city you can not use ships at all, hey they have 100 ships!

Well, that should not be a problem if you can not trade with Europe (ok), or you can try to go to Europe using west Europe plots instead, where there are not usually any ship.

BUT the new system also changes totally the sense of the game. What happens when you have colonies in one tile plots or small isles?
I have found the answer by myself... there is no way to protect those colonies since the King comes with 10 man-o-wars full of troops and will defeat any army you put there; you simply can not put enough soldiers in those small isles and also protect the main colonies. The funny thing is that after loosing them, the king soldiers will not move during the rest of the game, being totally useless!
But that's not the real problem, the point is that now the ships will stay in the coast so... how am I supposed to send some ships with troops to defeat the king's army if I have to fight first with all the navy?
No way. I loose the game, no joke. I defeated all the kings army that disembarked in the main continent, but there were 2 or 3 colonies with a few king's unit that I could not attack in any way. So I lost the game with an army size 10 times bigger than the king's army because simply there was no way to transport my soldiers to those isles without killing +100 man-o-wars.


It's not exactly a bug, but this "weird thing" has been introduced indirectly with TAC due to the new rules, it was not present in vanilla. This changes the game experience since isles should be totally avoided and now you don't have to worry about the AI if they have at least one colony in an isle, they can not win the game... there are maps where the aim is to found colonies in isles, those are totally useless too. At least all this applies for independence games, other objectives can be achieved without problems.

Also, the custom house seems to not work after declaring revolution (boycot, I know). But I paid the king to take away the boycott so I was supposed to be able to trade with cigars, and even doing so the custom house was not selling anything. Not sure if that's right, but I think it's strange..

 

[clearbeard]

On the custom house, iirc it would only continue to work if you choose "monarchy" in your constitution, such that you are still allowed to trade with Europe. Previous boycotts will still be in place even so, and if you choose the option that does not let you continue European trade your Custom Houses and their ilk will not have any benefit, as ALL goods are considered boycotted at that point.

As to the King's navy, it's not at all impossible to achieve naval superiority in TAC. Most times by the time I declare independence I have about 1/2 as many ships as the king. With the liberty combat bonus and especially after they start getting promotions, my ships of the line can go toe-to-toe with his Men-o-War with 60%+ combat odds. Usually the final wave still punches through as most of my remaining ships are in dock repairing, but a careful defense can still sink many fully loaded transports and eventually wrest control of the seas back.

Hope that helps.

 

[Writing Bull]

Since now the man-o-wars stay in the map around the player's city you can not use ships at all, hey they have 100 ships!

Hi IsabelXXX, I have some questions:

Which difficulty level do you use?

You have a city on a one-tile-plot, and you have problems to defend it. What was your preparation for the battles there, especially for the naval war? Concretely:

• How many warships had you built to defend your coast and that city?
• How many shipyards have you had at the beginning of the independence war?
• And how many turns do you need to produce a new warship during the war?

 

[Isabelxxx]

On the custom house, iirc it would only continue to work if you choose "monarchy" in your constitution, such that you are still allowed to trade with Europe. Previous boycotts will still be in place even so, and if you choose the option that does not let you continue European trade your Custom Houses and their ilk will not have any benefit, as ALL goods are considered boycotted at that point.

As to the King's navy, it's not at all impossible to achieve naval superiority in TAC. Most times by the time I declare independence I have about 1/2 as many ships as the king. With the liberty combat bonus and especially after they start getting promotions, my ships of the line can go toe-to-toe with his Men-o-War with 60%+ combat odds. Usually the final wave still punches through as most of my remaining ships are in dock repairing, but a careful defense can still sink many fully loaded transports and eventually wrest control of the seas back.

Hope that helps.

Ok, so custom houses are only useful with monarchy after revolution... understood.

But in that case that is a bug. I paid the king to trade with him, if Monarchy doesn't let me to trade with Europe what's the point of letting the user to pay for removing the boycott? I mean, that should be disabled after revolution.
I thought that not choosing monarchy would add boycotts to all the goods, but after paying the required gold, you could start trading again.

Which difficulty level do you use?

You have a city on a one-tile-plot, and you have problems to defend it. What was your preparation for the battles there, especially for the naval war?

I have 3 or 4 isles. Some one tile plot, others with 2 plots.

I played in the hardest level. But for me, it makes no difference; I mean: revolution should be a demonstration of power between the colony and the king, I totally destroyed the king's army without problems, loosing some isles and letting 10 king's unit to survive makes no sense at that point. So TAC totally loose the atmosphere at that point; vanilla had its problems, but I was able to win the revolution because there was not a massive amount of ships next to my cities.

Also, I think you didn't understand what I was trying to say. The game clearly states there is no need to defeat the king's navy, so what's the point of forcing the user to create an enormous navy to protect one isle? That's why I say TAC is not thought for Caribbean maps and is obvious after playing a few games; you have to choose between defending the main colonies or creating a navy to protect the isles.

Concretely:

How many warships had you built to defend your coast and that city?

The king had 120 man-o-wars when starting revolution, I had 30 warships (frigates and ships of the line).

How many shipyards have you had at the beginning of the independence war?

It didn't matter since I was not able to create ships because I had no cloth. I was playing the full America map, and conquered half of south America. There is no cotton there. The only way to build ships for me was buying cotton in Europe, since the other European nations are totally hostile in that level and I had to declare war to them in order to get military points and XP for my units.

And how many turns do you need to produce a new warship during the war?

No matter how you do it; it's not viable at all since now the other nations would win the revolution before I could create enough ships...
This is the idea I want to show you; I had more troops than anyone, a bigger nation, I defeated most of the King's troops and there was no way to win the game since I simply couldn't send one galleon with troops to reconquest those isles even when defeating king's navy is not supposed to be needed.

This is just my opinion, but it should be between vanilla and TAC system. The ships should do something different than staying next to all my cities... maybe some could return to Europe or something else. In Vanilla it made no sense because you could easily defeat the king's navy, TAC makes no sense because the King has a ridiculous massive navy doing nothing.
One could expect that even being outnumbered by GB, the American colonies were able to use ships because GB didn't send all the navy next to their cities and stayed there during all the war.
For me those details reduce the game atmosphere because there is no multiple possible ways to win but one. For ex. other detail: the king can not give you a simple frigate to fight against the enemy even if you loose 2-3 ships against the pirates, but he can maintain 100 ships next to your colonies for years... (?)

And even if you show me that I'm wrong and the King navy can be defeated or those isles protected, you have to agree with me about the AI problem. The AI is not capable of protecting those isles because they never have a large navy.

My overall experience with the mod is that TAC has improved the game in all aspects but one: the playability, after playing a game I have the feeling that it could have been better. There are plenty of good ideas introduced, the game has been expanded but also the game lacks a competent AI (without too many handicaps) and an intuitive atmosphere. I started playing col with interest, the same TAC, but at last, I found the game makes no sense due to all those AI bonuses, the feeling that the AI and I are in fact playing different games (one could think that a game where the aim is trading could be won by blockading all the enemy ports, but the AI doesn't need to sell anything to Europe for ex.)Those and other details have make me loose the interest.

That's why I say TAC is Col improved, but at least my opinion is that TAC has still the same problems that Col. There has not been a change in the base of the game.
This is the best col mod I have played so far (not played RAR yet eh! don't shoot me Ray ) but I still have opposite feelings about the game. Maybe I just don't like the way col works...

 

[Willi_Tell]

There has not been a change in the base of the game. [/B]

Indeed, compared to vanilla, TAC improved the game really a lot. But - and I think that's the point - TAC did not change the fundamental base and nature of the game. When it comes to War of Idependence (WoI), Civ4Col - and also TAC, with some improvement - works quite the same way as it was in original Col long time ago.


"Late Game" (after WoI) has always been boring, the game is simply not designed to be played after the Victory over the King's troops. No mod, neither TAC nor RaR (don't shoot me too, Ray ) did change that yet...

yeaaaa, a mod that grants a still exciting Late Game would be awesome, indeed...

 

[orlanth]

Really? What would you want to have happen in the post-WoI late game, Willi?

I suppose other victory conditions could include Industrialization (first to produce x units of yields x y z) or Enlightenment (discover x final tier Technologies as in Kailric's Inventor modcomps). Or, after successful WoI you get 20-40 turns or so of peace to recover and prepare, then a Civil War breaks out where half of your colonies/units revolt and must be brought back into the fold. Could maybe be done using existing code from FfH2 or Revolutions mods of Civ4.

For myself, I have to admit that I've very rarely made it through a game to the end The early game is interesting for me, but at some point it seems to take too long to manage each turn, or I realize I'm too far behind the King. Anyway, most people probably like the WoI Victory condition.. I wouldn't mind seeing a Civil War modcomp though.

 

[Lord Shadow]

My latest game has been ruined by the natives, who abruptly declared war on me and quickly crossed my borders with at least two dozen braves. I only had three musketmen in total to defend. This was in 1625, Pioneer difficulty. I reloaded and, several turns in advance of the invasion, I started mobilizing what little I had, and tried to churn out Cannon Garrisons to defend the two towns in the line of fire. I couldn't rush said guns given it was inexplicably expensive (2000+ gold) to do so.

However, when the time came, a different tribe (the Tupi) attacked me at the cities I had weakened even though our relations were at +2. Previously it had been the Shuar, whose move was more logical as they had the way of life disruption diplomatic malus and our relations were actually negative.

So I might be snarkier than usual because I'm frustrated to have spent 2+ hours into a game, doing great in almost all respects, but lost it in two minutes because of ONE thing I didn't dedicate enough attention to, and couldn't be remedied without going back at least over 25 turns. And the game mercilessly punished that with two metric tons of overpowered natives.

Seriously, wherever did the European technological superiority go? In the wilderness a Musketman can't even fight toe-to-toe with a basic Brave (contrary to what the Colopedia says). The 50% strength difference means next to nothing compared to the massive terrain bonuses natives units get. Not even defending a settlement do advanced European armour and firearms count for much against barenaked warriors with wooden spears unless there's heavy (stockade and upwards) fortification.

Sigh. For the future, does it take a sizeable garrison in each city to dissuade native attacks, or would a couple of musketmen/cannon garrisons be enough?

EDIT: Reloading about 20 turns before the invasion I could manufacture and buy a good number of Cannon Garrisons (didn't realize they were so cheap in Europe), enough to put about two per town right in the nick of time. Some settlements have a Musketman besides that. That seems to have discouraged the natives from attacking me.

EDIT2: The Shuar invaded nonetheless a few years later, and even though those new guns took out a bunch of them, there's just too many. And it's impossible to meet them in the field, given how grossly overpowered they are in the wild. The best one can do is cower behind walls, allowing the braves to rampage through the countryside while hoping they'll carry out poorly planned attacks on the settlements. But the AI is smart enough to hold off some attacks until it has enough units ready. That's how Providence burned after the destruction of its 3 Cannon Garrisons (supported by the most basic fortification), which cost the natives 6-7 braves at most, out of the couple dozen they had in my territory. I suppose they would eventually bleed out from carrying out similar assaults on my other towns, but two more would have to be overrun before I could do something. And by something I mean suicidal charges at the last few braves in the wilderness. Nothing else can be done.

I really want to like this mod, as it's otherwise mostly fantastic, but this is just insane and definitely game-breaking. There's a million things going on to be worrying about over-fortifying everything to defend against scarcely-provoked, massive invasions of native supersoldiers. On Pioneer difficulty.

 

[Willi_Tell]

@Lord Shadow
Reading your "War Log" with curiously, I can understand that your are not happy about the way things happened in that game. But as far as I can tell, the balancing of strength (brave vs. musketman/garrison) has not been altered by TAC. So losing towns against the native is is not really a "TAC issue", it may also happen the same way in Vanilla.

On the other hand, AI has been greatly improved by TAC, furthermore AI colonies receive some free garrison units in early game. But the human player must organize his defence by himself, and early enough...

I've been fooled myself by "wrong relation display" too, it's really not funny to be attacked by a tribe despite of having +2 relation with them. I think, the newest version of TAC based RaR Mod fixed that issue.

Really? What would you want to have happen in the post-WoI late game, Willi?

Well, I don't know exactly...

Col has never been designed to be played after WoI. It's all about "getting in tune" and preparing for the big fight against the king - and after that, the player has either been wiped out or became one hell of a military giant.

I could imagine a "Late Game Mod" with a much more exciting WoI (more than just the present "stack bashing"). Perhaps, some of the king's troops could be already present as King's Garrison at certain places (forts) in the player's colony. WoI should be kind of "deeper" and containing much more than just 5 waves of stack landings from Sea.

And WoI would not be the only aspect to be altered in such a mod. To provide a still thrilling atmosphere after WoI, drastical improvements in concept and gameplay might be needed. Don't ask me for detailed plans, as I don't have any...

 

[Lord Shadow]

@Lord Shadow
Reading your "War Log" with curiously, I can understand that your are not happy about the way things happened in that game. But as far as I can tell, the balancing of strength (brave vs. musketman/garrison) has not been altered by TAC. So losing towns against the native is is not really a "TAC issue", it may also happen the same way in Vanilla.

On the other hand, AI has been greatly improved by TAC, furthermore AI colonies receive some free garrison units in early game. But the human player must organize his defence by himself, and early enough...

I've been fooled myself by "wrong relation display" too, it's really not funny to be attacked by a tribe despite of having +2 relation with them. I think, the newest version of TAC based RaR Mod fixed that issue.

I don't know. To be honest I barely played vanilla Civ4Col back when it came out, so I don't remember how natives work by default. I do recall it was nothing like this in the original Colonization, or at least in the lower difficulty levels.

While TAC might not have altered the base stats of each brave, it did make the AI more aggressive across the board. And I get the feeling it boosted the natives' numbers, to the point they're arguably unmanageable.

 

[Majorasliepa]

Im playing this Mod with Patriot difficulty and i dont get any problems against natives. Just go to Europe and buy same cannons. They are cheap enough. So in early game you can easily rape the natives. In the beginning of game you allready have Cuirisairer, and first cannon from Europe cost only 500 gold, second 600 gold and etc.. So, you can start early conquest without any bigger problems.

Sorry for bad english...

 

[Commander Bello]

Natives can become a lethal danger especially on bigger maps. Give them some time to grow and get angry on you, and you may face literally hundreds of them.
This becomes even worse due to the fact that to a certain degree they calculate their battle odds - the battle odds of the respective stack, that is. As long as the stack is assumed to be too small, they will rarely attack your settlement at all. As soon as the stack becomes big enough, they will overwhelm you.
The latter is very much dependant on the structure of the map. Having a settlement at a bottlenack automatically leads to combining different stacks into one stack of doom - and then your settlement will fall.

In my worst experience I have lost four or five settlements (actually, some of them were really well developed and well protected cities) in the first turn of the war. After the turn was over I checked and found to have killed almost 200 natives. In the first turn of the war!

There is only one way to avoid this (except for managing to keep them at good terms, of course): identify the cities which are likely to be attacked first and put almost all of your defensive forces into these cities. The cities deeper inside your colony's area need much less protection. One or two units will do, if necessary at all.
In case of having already experienced ground forces (preferably with the Woodsman promotions in most cases) try to counter-attack at the periphery to avoid them assembling too big stacks.
If there is already a stack next to your settlement, a counter-attack against that stack may be viable. Your units cannot leave the settlement, but will reduce its strength, thus making the AI wait even longer for reinforcements. This will give you time to bring in your own reinforcements.

And finally, the AI doesn't build strategic reserves. Sometimes you will just have to suffer some losses (in numbers and settlements) but you will have weakened their initial forces. Then go and destroy their settlements as quickly as possible. Each destroyed settlement will lower their ability to create new units.

And have roads between your settlements - not only for transporting goods and weapons, but for relocating your ground forces quickly enough (or in the case of coastal cities, have some ships available for transportation).
And make use of your citizens. A carpenter or even a statesman may serve well as colonial militia - better to lose one expensive unit than to lose a city having taken 150 turns of development. Disarm wounded soldiers and re-equip citizens with full health.

And finally, my first general typically becomes a surgeon to heal wounded troops. Any unit you don't lose not only will be able to fight at least one other fight, but won't lose its weapons to the natives, either.

 

[Writing Bull]

However, when the time came, a different tribe (the Tupi) attacked me at the cities I had weakened even though our relations were at +2.

I've been fooled myself by "wrong relation display" too, it's really not funny to be attacked by a tribe despite of having +2 relation with them.

When a AI-nation is thinking about attacking another nation, there are several influencing factors. The current diplomatic relations are one of these factors. Other factors are, for example, the character of the AI leader and (very important!) the balance of power: If the AI-troops are superior to your troops, this leader will probably attack you.

If you have good relations to a AI-leader and he decides to attack you all the same, he has his reasons to do so. This behaviour is no bug, it's a feature. The TAC-modders didn't want that a user takes no notice of the necessity of a solid military defense.

I have 3 or 4 isles. Some one tile plot, others with 2 plots.
I played in the hardest level.
The game clearly states there is no need to defeat the king's navy, so what's the point of forcing the user to create an enormous navy to protect one isle? That's why I say TAC is not thought for Caribbean maps and is obvious after playing a few games; you have to choose between defending the main colonies or creating a navy to protect the isles.
The king had 120 man-o-wars when starting revolution, I had 30 warships (frigates and ships of the line).
It didn't matter since I was not able to create ships because I had no cloth. I was playing the full America map, and conquered half of south America. There is no cotton there. The only way to build ships for me was buying cotton in Europe
No matter how you do it; it's not viable at all since now the other nations would win the revolution before I could create enough ships...

At first, it was your first TAC session, and you played with the hardest difficult level. Then it has to be very, very hard to win. Elsewise the balancing of the difficult levels would be failed.

You built several cities at isles at the Eastern coast. You knew that the Royal navy will attack you from that direction. Nevertheless you focussed on recruiting a great land army and you built only few ships. At the war of independence the Royal navy has been too strong for you and you have failed to transport your great land army to your cities at these isles.

Sorry, but when you use the hardest difficult level, when you are not well prepared for the war of independence and when you lose the war, that is okay. If you would win a session at these conditions, the balancing of TAC would be failed.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Thank you all for your responses.

Well, I just reloaded again, just a couple of turns before the invasion, and this time the AI chose not to attack. My military strength was mostly the same, but I concentrated my forces in the larger of the two towns bordering the Shuar. Basically abandoned the smaller one, assuming the AI would be as fallible as Bello implied, and hoped the invaders would burn it and try attack the other town, therefore meeting their doom.

But this time the natives just didn't attack. All I did this time, besides grouping up, is perhaps move a couple Cannon Garrisons from the north. Maybe that's how close I was to dissuading an invasion.

There is only one way to avoid this (except for managing to keep them at good terms, of course): identify the cities which are likely to be attacked first and put almost all of your defensive forces into these cities. The cities deeper inside your colony's area need much less protection. One or two units will do, if necessary at all.
In case of having already experienced ground forces (preferably with the Woodsman promotions in most cases) try to counter-attack at the periphery to avoid them assembling too big stacks.
If there is already a stack next to your settlement, a counter-attack against that stack may be viable. Your units cannot leave the settlement, but will reduce its strength, thus making the AI wait even longer for reinforcements. This will give you time to bring in your own reinforcements.

And finally, the AI doesn't build strategic reserves. Sometimes you will just have to suffer some losses (in numbers and settlements) but you will have weakened their initial forces. Then go and destroy their settlements as quickly as possible. Each destroyed settlement will lower their ability to create new units.

And have roads between your settlements - not only for transporting goods and weapons, but for relocating your ground forces quickly enough (or in the case of coastal cities, have some ships available for transportation).
And make use of your citizens. A carpenter or even a statesman may serve well as colonial militia - better to lose one expensive unit than to lose a city having taken 150 turns of development. Disarm wounded soldiers and re-equip citizens with full health.

And finally, my first general typically becomes a surgeon to heal wounded troops. Any unit you don't lose not only will be able to fight at least one other fight, but won't lose its weapons to the natives, either.

All great advice.

The other times I played I kept both cities defended by a smaller garrison, thinking that if I concentrated my units, the AI would be smart enough to just maneuver around and past them and hit my much weaker settlements in the rear. If the enemy becomes obsessed with the border towns, then they're more exploitable (which in this case is a good thing as they have other advantages).

Im playing this Mod with Patriot difficulty and i dont get any problems against natives. Just go to Europe and buy same cannons. They are cheap enough. So in early game you can easily rape the natives. In the beginning of game you allready have Cuirisairer, and first cannon from Europe cost only 500 gold, second 600 gold and etc.. So, you can start early conquest without any bigger problems.

Sorry for bad english...

That's not my playstyle, and I don't think the game should treat the natives like a dormant Zerg brood that has to be destroyed with a very early pre-emptive strike before it becomes dangerous.

Natives can become a lethal danger especially on bigger maps. Give them some time to grow and get angry on you, and you may face literally hundreds of them.

I know some tribes are more aggressive than others, but there's something fundamentally wrong with portraying the natives in general as nothing more than a huge latent menace that has to be eliminated sooner or later. There's precious little that can be done to appease them, and European expansion gradually and inexorably angers them. Who knows, maybe I should actually trade with them instead of just dealing with the King.

When a AI-nation is thinking about attacking another nation, there are several influencing factors. The current diplomatic relations are one of these factors. Other factors are, for example, the character of the AI leader and (very important!) the balance of power: If the AI-troops are superior to your troops, this leader will probably attack you.

If you have good relations to a AI-leader and he decides to attack you all the same, he has his reasons to do so. This behaviour is no bug, it's a feature. The TAC-modders didn't want that a user takes no notice of the necessity of a solid military defense.

I understand the philosophy behind this, but the player can't deduce which chief has which personality, or get the hint he could be attacked due to weak defenses. In all recent Civ games, diplomacy screen has always been the tool to determine whether another leader likes you or could attack you soon. In this case, just like it tells you natives are getting upset because of your encroachment, it should also tell you whether your military weakness is giving them ideas, or their personality drives them to just not like you.

Because relations in these games boil down at the very core of the mechanic to likelihood of war. A friend wouldn't attack you just because he thinks he could beat you. Otherwise he wouldn't be your friend to begin with.

 

[Windfoot]

F5- The Military adviser shows you the trait of the natives (mouse over the leader). The traits give you a general idea of their aggressiveness...the "raider" trait is self explanatory.

You don't have to ever fight the natives. Pick a leader with the "explorer" trait. Get a founding father that improves relations. Have a strong military...rather than waiting until just before revolution to have a big army, build your military as you go along. Trade with the natives. Side with the local natives against a European or other native tribes.

This game punishes the player who wants to solely focus on one thing to the exclusion of other aspects.

There are many cases in history when a friend (ally) attacked a friend (ally) for gain. And in those cases many times the leaders knew their ally leaders personally and had personal friendships with them.

my 2cp,
Windfoot

 

[raystuttgart]

No mod is perfect for everybodies playing style.
But the development of the TAC base mod has ended ...

Also, there are many factors, e.g. mapsize, difficulty, ... you may influence so you might get a very different game experience in your next game.
Having had one (or a few) bad games does not necessarily mean that the mod itself is bad.

So well yes, you could try seeking for advice and tips.
Otherwise I believe that long posts complaining about certain issues are not very useful here.

The modders know how their mod works and usually have put some thought behind the features.
They have created a mod that fits their own playing styles.

The TAC team explicitly designed the Natives to be less predictive and more dangerous.

So what are your alternatives ?

1. Adjust your playing style by the advices you get.
2. Try to live with the mod as it is and enjoy the aspects you like.
3. Start to mod yourself and change certain aspects to your liking.
4. Play another mod.
5. Completely quit playing.